The Obama effect. A friend just got back from Europe. Last year she felt like a pariah. Porters in Paris refused to pick up her daughter's bags. At a ski lodge in Switzerland people screamed "Bush" at her over dinner. Of course they hold Americans responsible. Everything was different this time. "We came into Berlin. It was different from the moment we came into the airport." People congratulated her, people smiled at her when they learned she was an American. "We stopped in London, and saw an expat friend. He told us, 'People are just hysterically happy with us.'"
(P.S.S.S.T. The mood is changing in the U.S. too. Radical!)
I went to France this summer and stopped at a Spanish airport on the way. I didn't know what they were saying because 'no hablo espanol' but I heard "Obama" several times between people talking with each other. He's definitely popular there.
"The Ugly Americans": Bless their pea pickin' hearts! I still want a Canadian passport!
I have to say as an expat in the UK (Scotland, to be specific) I've noticed a sea-change in the attitude towards the US already. I arrived here a few years back, at the height of the Bush/Cheney darkness – my accent didn't invite antipathy so much as pity in the Scots I met. But I've had several encounters with strangers here in the last week which have ended with warm congratulations and sincere smiles on the prospect of an Obama presidency. I wouldn't read too much into this — Obama could well destroy these good vibes with a few bad decisions — but people here are definitely looking at the US in a very new light.
Why would anyone yell at tourists? It takes a real lack of sophistication to blame United States foreign policy on average Americans. We don't even hassle foreigners who openly break any number of federal, state and local laws in the United States. The world truly is upside-down.
This is because US elections have become nothing more than a rebranding, and the world stupidly has acceded to this charade of election rebranding. The republican brand becomes unpalatable to political consumers, so the college-educated of this country sought to replace it with a metosexual youth brand that they could feel good about.
Meanwhile, what we really need is a president like FDR, who was not afraid to take chances, an aristocrat who couldn't have cared less about his donors, who is willing to swim upstream and make radical changes. Obama has already shown himself to be completely beholden to his donors. His first two cabinet picks, Emanuel and Hillary Clinton, reflect this. Obama will have his army of Stan Greenbergs, taking hourly soundings of the populace, to make sure that his brand stays fresh and marketable. Nothing has changed except the brand, Phil.
Madrid: "what we really need is a president like FDR, who was not afraid to take chances, an aristocrat who couldn't have cared less about his donors,"
I'm usually pretty anti-elitist, and I thought FDR's collaboration with Stalin was reprehensible, but I think you are very right about this. Both Bill Clinton and Obama are, deep down, very insecure people, which is a major reason each did, has, and will, dance for the Jews. Bush, theoretically from aristocratic stock, was just plain dumb. A real aristocrat that would look down his nose at the Zionists and the other shallow, selfish and short-sighted moneyed interests for what they really are might be the last hope of actually salvaging this country before it sinks completely into bankruptcy and oblivion. Obama is just too damn nice, and wants too much to be liked by everyone, to ever take the Zionist and Wall Street chicanery crew down a few pegs.
Bush has inadvertently woken up more people around the globe than any other president in US history. There are millions of people around the world now that see the bankster puppeteers behind the scenes now and Bush has had a lot to do with it.
I'm amazed at how little it takes. We go from being a despised nation to a beloved one just because we elected Obama? What about this country's foreign policy? Doesn't it matter too? But our policies haven't changed yet, so what is everyone overseas so happy about?
@Duscany:
"our policies haven't changed yet, so what is everyone overseas so happy about?"
It's easy, and works just like so much else: The newspapers and talking heads tell us to be happy and "feel good" because of Obama, like another comment put it. The media of course won't mention important stuff like Emanuels appointment or how the Democrat leadership is just as corrupt as the Republican leadership. All the tell us is "he's young and black and he wants healthcare for all, plus he is NOT a Republican, so applaud him and shut up".
If Phil is correct that American tourists have "earned the right" to be treated with respect because the American people wisely (according to the "progressive" Europeans) elected Obama, then I suggest that all Arab/Muslim tourists be treated rudely since their co-religionists are carrying out suicide bombings every day in various countries around the world. If collective guilt is assumed to be reasonable to apply to Americans and Jews, than it should also be applied to every other group in the world.
@ bar_kochba132
Americans are held accountable worldwide because they continue to elect arrogant, presumptuous leaders who think they have a God-given, worldwide right to put their fingers in everyone's pies, and tell them how to live, based on the exceptionalism of America’s past, which is long gone (we are now coasting on the fumes of the noble Christian ethic now, and have been for some time.)
Jews are held accountable around the world because their leadership thinks it has a God-given right to manipulate, con, exploit and pull American strings with its money, and tell everyone else how to live (always predicated upon whatever is best for Jewish interests) using America as a proxy. (If Muslims were to infiltrate American power the same way organized Jewry has, and use it as belligerently and irresponsibly, I have little doubt they would come under worldwide contempt, too.)
Jewish ascension to the top of America combined with America’s sole super-power status and American moral decline was the perfect storm for a disaster. Most Americans are money worshippers and/or liberal degenerates now (as is much of the West), and so we no longer have the moral authority to tell anyone else how to live. I think the world senses this now — even the Western world.
bar_kochba132 (now that's an interesting handle):
Phil was talking about Western European opinion.
Not semitic opinion.
Ed, nice take on "repairing the world."
The best of "good" intentions often go astray.
Why would I want to visit Europe? Especially if they're that easily led astray…
No more trips to Europe for the rest of my life. I've written you off. Period.
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